Home > Death at the Crystal Palace (Kat Holloway Mysteries #5)(4)

Death at the Crystal Palace (Kat Holloway Mysteries #5)(4)
Author: Jennifer Ashley

   As our train skimmed out of the station past the lakes, Grace pressed her face to the windows to gaze at the models of ancient beasts that inhabited the islands. The giant reptiles glowered at their human observers, though children ran among them fearlessly. We’d not had time to visit the islands today, but I would bring her back another time so we could explore them thoroughly.

   At Victoria Station, Grace and I parted ways with my friends. A hansom, generously provided by Miss Townsend, conveyed my daughter and me across St. James’s to the Strand and along Fleet Street to St. Paul’s and the Millburns’ house not far from the cathedral. I visited briefly with Joanna then parted with Grace, again praising her good manners as I hugged her. After this, I ascended the hansom once more to return to Mayfair.

   I wiped my eyes as we went—dratted soot in the air. My chest felt hollow, as it always did when leaving my daughter.

   I alighted from the hansom in South Audley Street near Grosvenor Chapel and walked around the corner to Mount Street. It would never do for the mistress to look out the window and see me emerge from a cab—she’d lecture me, as usual, on me getting above myself.

   The sky darkened with the coming evening as I tramped heavily down the outside steps to the kitchen door. I entered to find Elsie singing in the scullery as she washed a stack of dishes, and the kitchen abuzz with activity.

   Tess, my assistant, vigorously stirred something burbling on the stove, sweat dripping down her freckled face. She’d come a long way in the last year from the impertinent waif who’d never chopped a carrot to a competent cook I could leave in charge on my days out.

   Mr. Davis, the butler, was lecturing a footman in the servants’ hall—from the words that floated to the kitchen, I gathered the new footman had made some sort of gaffe while serving at table during luncheon.

   Tess called out a cheerful good evening to me. “Happy to see you, Mrs. H. This sauce ain’t thickening for nothing. It needs your touch, it does.”

   I unwound myself from coat and hat, though I’d need to change my frock before I began cooking. I could not afford to let this one be stained.

   Mrs. Redfern, our housekeeper, strode from the passageway into the kitchen, though she halted just inside the doorway. She would never presume to impede meal preparations.

   “I feel I must warn you.” Mrs. Redfern’s preamble made Tess spin in alarm, the spoon with which she’d been stirring the recalcitrant sauce dripping white stock to the floor.

   “Warn me of what, Mrs. Redfern?” I asked, a trifle impatiently. I was tired and still had much work to do before I could rest.

   “Of what is happening upstairs—”

   “It’s a devil of a thing,” Mr. Davis cut in as he joined her, having finished his lecturing. “The Earl and Countess of Clifford have arrived.”

   Mr. Davis’s words made me stop in astonishment. “Good heavens.” Lord and Lady Clifford were Lady Cynthia’s parents. They lived on an estate in Hertfordshire and seldom left it.

   “Good heavens, indeed,” Mr. Davis said. “They’ve declared they’re here to fetch our Lady Cynthia home.”

 

 

2

 


   Fetch her home?” I asked Mr. Davis in dismay.

   Lady Cynthia’s parents were rather weak people, in my opinion—though I’d never met them—but she was their daughter, and they could summon her home if they wished. Cynthia was a spinster with no income of her own, entirely dependent on her family.

   She was also my friend. Working in this house would be terribly lonely without her.

   “I know who’s doing this is,” Mr. Davis said darkly. He meant Mrs. Bywater, a woman he considered to be hopelessly middle-class and without taste.

   Tess sent me an imploring gaze. “They can’t take her away, can they, Mrs. H.? What are we going to do?”

   I made myself move to the table to inspect the greens and new carrots Tess had washed and chopped. “Do not screech, Tess, please. There is little we can do. Lady Cynthia is a guest in this house, not its mistress.”

   Tess’s mouth hung open, and even Mr. Davis stared at me. Elsie had ceased her singing and peered into the kitchen, her dishcloth dribbling soapy droplets to her apron.

   “How can you say that?” Tess demanded. “You must do something. Speak to the mistress. Speak to her folks.”

   “My dear Tess, they will not listen to the likes of me. Now we must get on. Tear the greens next time rather than chop them, though we can shred some cabbage with them and make a tasty salad. I must change my frock. Won’t be a tick.”

   The others regarded me in amazed silence. I suppose they expected me to march upstairs and lecture Lady Cynthia’s parents about where it was best for her to stay, but I could hardly do such a thing.

   Truth to tell, my heart was breaking. I’d come to be good friends with Cynthia, and I’d miss her dreadfully. Though we were close in age, Cynthia often sought my advice when she was worried, and she’d helped me out of trouble more than once.

   But it was no good giving way to despair. I hurried through the passageway with their silence behind me and climbed the stairs to the main house.

   I opened the green baize door, intending to nip through the landing to the set of stairs that would take me to my attic room, but raised voices from beyond the drawing room’s open doors made me pause. I do not approve of eavesdropping, but the people within were speaking so loudly, I could not help but overhear.

   “If you wish me to catch a husband, rusticating in the country will do me no good.” Cynthia’s strident tones rang. “The only bachelors for miles are a fourteen-year-old boy and Mr. Weir the farmer next door, who is eighty-two. Do you see me as a doting farmer’s wife?”

   “Cynthia, darling, do not be so droll.” A weary female voice floated past Cynthia’s adamance, but the words held steel. “Of course there are plenty of young men near Ardeley Hall. Many of our friends have sons, and they’ve retired to the country for the summer. I cannot imagine how you remain here in London, with the heat and the stink.”

   “It smells better than endless cowpats,” Cynthia said.

   “Ha.” A man’s voice, rather high-pitched and languid, joined in. “Cynthia, darling, you do say the most amusing things. But really, dear girl, how pleasant can it be for you staying here with my brother-in-law and his dreary wife?”

   I wondered, wincing, if the Bywaters were at home to hear him. Or perhaps Lord Clifford did not care whom he skewered with his opinions.

   “Better than rattling around a manor house with a leaky roof,” was Cynthia’s rejoinder. “Why you wanted that pile of bricks, Papa, I cannot fathom.”

   Lord Clifford chuckled breathlessly. “Yes, yes. Highly amusing.”

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